


don't leave without saying goodbye

by bstarship



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt Peter Parker, Hurt Tony Stark, Peter Parker Calls Tony Stark "Dad", Peter Parker Feels, Peter Parker is a Mess, Protective Tony Stark, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Is Not Helping, Tony Stark Loves Peter Parker, also hasn't tony been through enough, hasn't peter been through enough, kids please stop arguing, so why do i keep putting him through more
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:54:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24061687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bstarship/pseuds/bstarship
Summary: “School go okay?” Tony asked with a huff. It lacked that lick of genuine curiosity.Peter played with his hands and watched as the man kept his gaze low—too low. Like he wished Peter wasn’t even there. “Uh, yeah,” he replied, shrugging and fiddling for words on the tip of his tongue. “Wasn’t all that interesting. We had a fire drill but it wasn’t actually a drill because someone in the woodshop set their project on fire. It got me out of a quiz though. That was fun.”Tony hummed. And that hum was all that Peter was going to get. Disinterest and agitation were painted within the hard edges in Tony’s jaw and brow lines. If it hadn’t been a good day for Peter, then it definitely hadn’t been for Tony either.orPeter is probably having the worst day ever. First, he gets into an argument with Tony, punches a random guy in a pizza shop, and then he’s forced to watch his mentor get carted away on a stretcher. It's one big terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 13
Kudos: 255





	don't leave without saying goodbye

Peter’s heart was lodged into his throat.

He couldn’t see past the burning reds and blacks fielding through his vision, crackling in his retinas like there was a fire burning in his chest—a rising smokestack of nothing but anger, frustration, and broken trust _._ His hands reached into the sky, each _thwip_ and _swish_ of his webs soaring into what felt like oblivion until they met another building with a loud _smack._ He couldn’t hear anything. He couldn’t hear the wind rushing over his ears or the sounds of strangers calling his name from down below. Instead, he was locked in a state of hot, burning rage, and he couldn’t get out of it even if he tried.

_“Mister Parker?”_

Peter landed on top of a light post. He recognized that voice from his times at the Tower. “FRIDAY?” he asked. “What’re you doin’ here?”

_“It’s about Mister Stark.”_

* * *

He had already been in a bad mood when Peter stepped into the workshop. Him or Tony—he wasn’t sure. The man worked in silence, the kind of silence that emitted weird energy and told Peter that not a damn thing had gone right today, so stay out of his way. He wished he had listened to that voice in his head. As Peter set his things down onto a workbench, the silence lost its novelty. Tony jumped back, and tools that had once been on a table were knocked down to the floor.

 _“_ Jesus, _shit_ ,” he spat and bent over to retrieve the items. He didn’t spare Peter a glance as he grumbled, “you could’ve said hello.”

Peter could tell that he wasn’t going to like today.

“Sorry,” he muttered back, sitting down on a stool. He didn’t say much else.

Peter’s bad days came in the form of blinding saturations and unearthly pigmentations, fluctuating, ghastly sounds that drove his brain into near-insanity. He picked apart every hint of noise and analyzed it thoroughly, wishing he could be in someone else’s body for the day. But now he was here with Tony, and the silence felt like scratching porcelain.

He just knew that if he did speak, it wouldn’t be welcomed with balloons and confetti.

“School go okay?” Tony asked with a huff. It lacked that lick of genuine curiosity.

Peter played with his hands and watched as the man kept his gaze low—too low. Like he wished Peter wasn’t even there. “Uh, yeah,” he replied, shrugging and fiddling for words on the tip of his tongue. “Wasn’t all that interesting. We had a fire drill but it wasn’t actually a drill because someone in the woodshop set their project on fire. It got me out of a quiz though. That was fun.”

Tony hummed. And that hum was all that Peter was going to get. Disinterest and agitation were painted within the hard edges in Tony’s jaw and brow lines. If it hadn’t been a good day for Peter, then it definitely hadn’t been for Tony either.

Things remained silent for the next few minutes. Peter dug into his backpack and fished out what was left of his homework, and the only sounds filling the workshop were the soft clattering of tools over by Tony.

“And what about yesterday?” he asked suddenly. Tony’s voice reminded Peter of Ben’s—the rigidness in the soft, and the hidden frustration between each word. His voice alone explained that there were things left unsaid.

“What do you mean?”

“How was school yesterday?” Tony rephrased, but he didn’t seem to like that he had to repeat himself. He still couldn’t make eye contact with Peter.

Peter could hardly remember what day it was, let alone any substantial event that occurred a whole twenty-four hours prior. He shrugged again, mumbling out, “I don’t really—”

Tony cut him off with a sharp, “I know you left early.”

 _Oh_. “Y-yeah, I—”

“What were you doing?” Tony finally glanced up, jaw setting as his eyes hardened with the inflections in his tone. “What were you thinking? Absences count against your grade, Pete, and if you—”

“Mister Stark, I don’t really wanna talk about this—”

“No, we are talking about this!” he yelled and slammed a hand down against the metal workbench. Its echo reverberated through the awkward tension in the room.

Peter’s heartbeat rang in his ears, but he wasn’t sure his heart was still in his body. It had run up to Utica with the sudden twist in his stomach, and he could still hear Tony’s outburst repeating over and over in his head. _Red, red, red_.

“I don’t want to,” Peter said, this time swallowing down enough strength to withstand another potential outburst. As far as he knew, it came out of nowhere—it was unlike Tony, but Peter had only been in the workshop for all but ten minutes. Something could have happened, someone could have died, and Tony would never tell him.

“Shit sucks,” Tony replied. “You’ll listen. Don’t like what you hear? Deal with it. That’s my tech you’re dealing with, kid. You’ve become _my_ responsibility. If you don’t like that, then take your hero shit elsewhere, ‘cos I’m not gonna help you if you can’t just follow some simple fucking rules.”

Peter felt heat rise to his cheeks as the tension in the room skyrocketed. He balled his hands into fists at his sides. “Well, I’m—I’m sorry you’re so burdened by the responsibility of me. I didn’t ask for—”

“That’s _not_ what I meant—”

“—I didn’t ask for any of this. I didn’t ask for you to—to control my life!” Peter exclaimed, and he realized that he forgot. He forgot who he was even talking to. The name, the face—it was like he was staring at his uncle again, watching his brown eyes harden as the words of a teen float through the air. Peter hadn’t argued with anyone in so long; he never imagined he would ever yell at Tony Stark.

Tony’s expression contorted. “That’s how it is, huh? You think I’m here because I want to control your life?”

“Y-you only treat me like a kid,” Peter said, desperate to keep his voice from trembling. “You only know how to treat me like a kid.”

“You are a kid!”

“Yeah, but I’m tired of you not trusting me!” The heat in his cheeks had risen to his eyes. It pricked beneath his skin, and he did his best to blink away the tears. “If you could just trust me—”

Tony chuckled dryly. “This isn’t about me not trusting you, kid. This about _you_. You need to learn discipline. If you can’t learn to balance your school life and your so-called hero life, then maybe you shouldn’t have a hero life at all.”

Peter hated it. He hated the words and the person they were coming from. He hated that Tony didn’t even deny not trusting Peter. And he hated how it made him feel. When Tony called him a hero, it didn’t sound like he meant it.

“School comes before Spider-Man—that’s what we agreed on,” Tony said. His tone had softened, but he still wasn’t gentle. He didn’t care if he sounded harsh. “Clearly you aren’t even capable of following the simplest of rules.”

“Then you shouldn’t have kept me around in the first place.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” the man replied without sparing a glance. “Maybe I shouldn’t have.”

Peter crumbled, shoulders falling in as the air left his lungs. Tears stung in his eyes. For the moment, he knew what true resentment felt like. He never imagined feeling so hurt and neglected by a person he spent his whole life idolizing, all for it to come down to a stupid argument about school, of all things, in under five minutes.

“You don’t mean that,” he tried to say, but his voice croaked with the words.

Tony’s face never changed.

Instead of waiting for a reply, Peter’s chest filled with heavy anger again, but he was too upset to allow it to form words. He stood and kicked the stool away before grabbing his things and starting toward the door.

“Where are you going?” Tony asked, annoyance seeping through his words and drowning out any curiosity.

He didn’t care. He never cared. That was what Peter assumed.

“Doesn’t matter,” he grumbled in return. He didn’t give Tony enough time to answer before shutting the door behind him. And he half-expected to be followed, but there was silence in the dust of his trail.

Peter felt sick to his stomach. No, none of that just happened. It couldn’t have happened. The way it all escalated gave him whiplash—he couldn’t wrap his head around what went wrong or if anything went wrong in the first place. Sure, he had been crabby; but Tony? That wasn’t real. It hadn’t been real.

Black clouds were building in Peter’s head, brain bursting within the confines as he kept his chest from heaving. He didn’t immediately stuff his limbs into the suit. He didn’t swing away from the Tower with his heart all in tangles. Instead, he scuffed his heels on the ground and kept his eyes on his shoes. He couldn’t even wave goodbye to the receptionist or the security at the front door.

Peter knew what it was like to feel unwanted. Maybe that was why his anger mixed so well with sadness. He was hurt, but he was tired of being hurt.

His emotions interfered with one another as he stumbled down 42nd street. With his backpack strapped tight to his shoulders, he imagined his suit burning a hole right through him. He thought about what Tony told him—the mess of words he still managed to remember. What if he was right? What if he didn’t deserve any of this? What if none of it had been meant for him?

Peter shook his head to fight off the thoughts. There were hot tears pricking at his eyes, blinding his vision while his gaze was still locked on the concrete, all scrapped with gum and bird poop like it hadn’t rained in years.

He could only hear Tony’s voice, raised and angered. No mercy, and _red_. Nothing but a repressed emotion building and building until its final unraveling. Peter hadn’t deserved it, at least he didn’t think he did.

But the more Peter heard Tony in his head, the more his thoughts of Ben came rushing back. Forgotten words from their last argument seeped through the cracks, and Peter felt as though he was choking on the smog as he crossed the street toward Bryant Park. This was more to him than a reprimand. This was a relapse of memories, old self-destructive habits taking the blame for uncontrollable—and partially controllable—things. He wanted to burst into tears, but the dog walkers and street performers were already looking at him funny.

He checked his phone. No messages. No apologies. Nothing.

Joe’s Pizza on Broadway had been a staple of his childhood when he and his uncle came into the city. Peter figured, as he approached the gaudy neon, that there was no better way to make himself feel better. Surely, he was bound to forget about everything over a slice of pepperoni.

He stood in a line of five people, counting down the minutes as he listened in on conversations from across the shop. There was a stench of alcohol left by the man in front of him, but his senses only started screaming once it was the man’s turn to order. Peter tried to ignore it as best as he could. He could hear every bit of the argument between the customer and the man behind the counter.

“Look, guy, I’m sorry, but you’re gonna have to find another way to—”

“I don’t got another way to pay, man, it’s three fuckin’ dollars,” said the man as he slapped down his credit card. “Take the fuckin’ card and give me a slice of fuckin’ pizza.”

“It’s a five-dollar minimum, I can’t—”

The man leaned himself against the counter and said, in the thickest New York accent, “you can’t? _You can’t?_ Bullshit. Bullshit! Three-dollars for—for shitty pizza, and you can’t be a good-goddamn-person and jus’ gimme the slice for free?”

Peter’s anxiety heightened with each passing second. _Don’t get involved. Don’t get involved._

“Man, I said I’m sorry, okay?” the guy behind the counter said. “It’s policy.”

The other man laughed. “ _Sorry_. You’re _sorry_. Jesus. Yeah, you look real damn sorry!”

“If you don’t leave now, I’m gonna have to call the police.”

He reached over the counter and grabbed the guy by his collar. “You’re gonna call the fuckin’ cops, huh? Over three-dollars? You wanna try that again? You crazy—”

Peter couldn’t take it anymore. He stepped up to the man, placed a hand on his shoulder, and said, “hey, dude, back off. You don’t need to hurt anybody.”

The drunk man laughed again, but he released his grip on the other guy before slowly turning to face Peter. “Cute. A twelve-year-old is threatening me.”

“Look, I’m not twelve, and I’m not threatening you,” Peter replied calmly. But he wasn’t calm, not in the slightest. He was still running on frustrated adrenaline from his encounter with Tony, and he knew that getting himself into another confrontational situation wasn’t going to end well. The problem was, he also didn’t care. “Just chill out, okay? He doesn’t make the rules.”

“Chill out?” The man took a step toward him. “Yeah, okay. I’ll chill out.”

Peter saw the punch coming, but the issue was that he hadn’t felt it. His senses were off, so the man’s fist collided with Peter’s cheek with a loud _smack_ , a chorus of shrieks from bystanders echoed around him. He stumbled back as he clutched the side of his face. He had been hit harder than that a hundred times as Spider-Man, but he didn’t feel like Spider-Man today.

“Is that chilled out enough for ya?” the man asked.

 _No_ , Peter thought, letting out a shaky breath, _don’t engage. No more engaging._

“Shit, you’re that Stark intern aren’t ya?” With a curt laugh, the man dropped his hands to his sides. “The one everyone loves so much—you’re Stark’s kid. What’s it like working for a fuckin’ nutbag, huh? You gotta be a real dumbass to wanna work with someone like—”

Peter had thrown the punch before he could hold back on his strength. By the time he could see past the burning red, the drunk man was out cold on the ground. Everyone in the restaurant stared at Peter like he had just killed him. He hadn’t—he knew that. He would never kill anyone.

He ran out before anyone could budge. It wasn’t like Peter to cause a scene, but he wasn’t ashamed. His blood was boiling, fingers twitching and aching to grasp something while he shoved past shoulders on the street. _Red, red red._ He could still feel the remnants of the punch on his knuckles, although he hardly remembered throwing it.

 _Stop it, Peter, stop it_. All he wanted to do was swing away from his problems, but he could still hear Tony’s voice in his head; it was much louder than the sounds of the city. Maybe Peter didn’t deserve it—Spider-Man—but didn’t want to be Peter anymore. Not right now.

He slipped into the only dark alleyway he could find and tore his backpack off of his shoulders. _He didn’t deserve the suit, he didn’t deserve the—_

He stared at the dark emblem on the suit’s chest. He used to see the suit as an opportunity. It had been an honor to wear it because it hadn’t felt like his. It felt like it belonged to Tony, that it was another quirky piece of tech designed by a billionaire, and Peter had the chance to adorn it for a while. When the novelty wore off, he was desperate to feel it again. He was desperate to feel like he hadn’t taken it all for granted.

If Tony saw it that way, maybe he had a point.

There were a few tears in the suit, ones that Peter had planned on fixing at the workshop until the yelling ensued. The volume of it all still rang in his ears. He sighed and checked the entrance to the alley to make sure no one was around. He didn’t want to go home, and he didn’t want to be found.

As the suit clung to his body, his heads-up display came alive, and he took off.

* * *

_“It’s about Mister Stark.”_

Peter wasn’t sure where he was or how he ended up there. Night had fallen hours ago, but the city—and himself included—were still very much awake. He had swung through every inch of the city, ignoring the ache in his arms and shoulders as he pushed on. He needed to burn it off—the conversation, the encounter with the man, the frustration, the heartbreak, and the bit of sensory overload that was still left in his system. And he couldn’t ignore the repetition of thoughts in his head. _Maybe he had been right. Maybe he had been wrong. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe._

He believed he was in Tribeca when an AI interrupted his stewing tangent. When it wasn’t Karen, however, he had to stop what he was doing completely.

FRIDAY had never, in his time of being Spider-Man, been implemented into his system—at least that he knew of. Tony did a lot of repairs and additions on the down-low that Peter could blink and miss. In all honesty, it didn’t come as much of a shock to him that Tony’s AI had access to his suit, too.

“Mister Stark?” Peter asked he watched a few strangers stare up at him on the lamp post. They waved, and he waved back. “W-what about him?”

 _“He’s experiencing a mild myocardial infarction,”_ she explained, sounded slightly panicked despite not being sentient. _“I’ve contacted medical help, and I’ve also been asked to contact you.”_

“Wait—what?” Peter nearly choked on his own saliva. “Y-you serious? You’re not joking about this right? He didn’t send you to—to make me feel guilty, or anything?”

 _“I’m being completely serious, Mister Parker,”_ replied the AI. _“He’s still in his workshop. He wants to see you.”_

“O-okay, okay,” Peter sputtered, launching a string of web toward the building opposite to him. “I’m on my way.”

He didn’t have a single thought running through his head as he swung through the city. It was faster than he had ever swung before. He still believed it was a joke—he _wanted_ to believe it was a joke, because if it was, and if FRIDAY was right, then Tony was up in his workshop dying and asking for Peter… and Peter wasn’t there.

But he was going to be.

There was no more anger, no more pain from spending the whole night swinging around and wallowing in self-pity. All that was left were urgency and fear. Tony couldn’t die. He couldn’t. He couldn’t leave Peter.

If he did—if Peter didn’t even have the chance to say goodbye—the guilt would eat him alive. What happened to Ben already hurt enough.

What if this was Peter’s fault? What if the yelling, the anger, and the unresolved, had caused all of this?

Peter broke in through the penthouse, and unlike many times before, no alarm sounded. There were no lights, no jarring voice of FRIDAY to ward him off. Not even Pepper, who was out-of-state and could frighten him with a grin.

He didn’t spend too long wishing for a simpler time before he fled up a flight of stairs to the workshop.

“FRIDAY?” Peter asked into the air. “Is he still—”

 _“He’s still breathing,”_ she said, _“but he’s slipping unconscious. A medical team should be here any minute.”_

Peter nodded. “Thanks.”

His breathing came out in hot pants against his mask, and every step burned his shins, but he didn’t care. He kept running up each step until he reached the workshop. It was then he realized that he had been crying.

When Peter entered the room, Tony was lying on his side beside his desk, eyes screwed shut with his hands balled into fists on his chest. Peter ran over and knelt beside him.

“Mister—Mister Stark?” he whispered, reaching a shaky hand toward the man’s shoulder. He needed to do something—maybe CPR, _he didn’t know_ , but he couldn’t get his brain to work that fast. Every instinct he had as Spider-Man was gone. “Please, _please_ , Mister Stark. It’s me. It’s Peter.”

Tony’s eyebrows lifted ever-so-slightly, and the tight lines in his skin loosened. He opened his mouth to speak, but all that came out was a puff of air and a soft, “Pete?”

The elevator door to the workshop opened, and a handful of EMTs rushed in.

“Is that—?” one of them began to ask.

“Spider-Man? Can you explain to us what happened?” asked another, meanwhile, two men and a woman were helping Tony up and onto a stretcher.

Peter could feel his insides churn. He couldn’t explain what happened. He hardly knew where he was—he hardly knew _who_ he was. And he couldn’t take his eyes off of Tony.

“I-I—heart attack. I don’t—”

“It’s okay,” the EMT instructed. “Take a few deep breaths. You’ll be all right— _he’ll_ be all right. Okay? We’re gonna head to Tisch, and he’ll be in good hands there. I promise. Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?”

Peter shook his head. The person was kind, but talking wasn’t going to help him. Seeing Tony better— _smiling_ —was going to help. “No. No, thank you. I’m, uh—I’m going to send over h-his intern, Peter. Peter Parker. If you could just tell that to whoever is at the front desk so he can be allowed in, that’d—that’d be great. Thanks.”

The EMT nodded and smiled. Behind him, Tony was being wheeled over to the elevator. “Yeah, sure. You riding with us then, Spider-Man?”

“No, I got the distance covered, but thank you,” Peter said.

The EMT chuckled. “Of course. Nice meeting you.”

“Y-you, too.”

Once Tony was gone, and once Peter was alone, he felt _too_ alone. Like a presence had left, and he still didn’t say goodbye.

* * *

Peter walked into the Emergency Room clad in Tony’s clothes. The man always had sweats and a t-shirt lying around, and once Peter got his hands on some slippers, he took off toward the hospital and changed on the roof.

He hated hospitals. He hated the smell, the atmosphere, and any feeling he associated with it. He hated his memories surrounding them, and he hated making new ones.

The man at the front desk was nice. When he asked Peter for ID, he took it with a dramatic flick of the wrist. It was a Stark Industries badge, one Peter insisted that Tony give him to make his internship feel a little more official. The next day, his name and face were plastered on a 3x2” card. It was a dream he hadn’t realized came true.

The hallways of the ER were an endless maze as the guy—Peter learned that his name was Darren—led Peter down them.

“So, Tony Stark?” Darren asked. “What’s he like?”

“Uh—” Peter replayed all of the arguments from the day over in his head and glanced down at his shoes. “Nice. Smart. Great guy. Solid dude.”

“When I was like, thirteen or so,” Darren began, “I became obsessed with Iron Man. I swore on my life I was gonna become a superhero and fight crime with him.”

Peter laughed, but only to be kind. “Yeah, me too.” Which was true—he had imagined that, too, but in his case, it actually happened. He had realized it before, yet it never truly hit him that he was so _lucky_.

From down the hall, he could hear Tony’s voice as if it was right next to him. The hairs on Peter’s arm stood on end, not because there was danger or excitement, but because he was scared for a perfectly normal and human reason. He didn’t know if the anger-fueled tension from earlier would still remain or if neither of them would know what to say.

Peter said a quick ‘thank you’ to Darren as he approached the glass doors leading into Tony’s assigned room. The nurse taking his vitals left once Peter walked in. The man was propped up on his bed, a mess of wires stuck into his arm while a hospital gown was draped loosely over his shoulders. A thin white blanket covered his lap, and for the most part, he looked fine. He looked healthy and unharmed. And then he saw Peter.

“They’ve got me on stuff,” Tony said slowly, reaching up to his chest and tapping on the spot above his heart. “Anti-clot drugs.”

Peter nodded. He didn’t know what to say or if he should bring up what happened earlier. He didn’t know if he should mention any of it at all.

“Beta blockers, alpha blockers— _omega_ blockers.” Tony chuckled to himself. “Those last ones aren’t a thing.”

“You scared me,” Peter blurted. He crossed his arms over his chest.

Tony’s small smile fell, and for a few moments, they stared at each other in silence. “You’re wearing my clothes,” he stated.

Peter nodded. “They were all I could find. I-I was in—I was in my suit, so—”

“What happened to your face?”

He raised an eyebrow, reaching a hand up toward the cheek that was hit earlier. When his fingers met the sensitive skin, he winced, muttering out a quiet, “ _shit_.”

“Pete.”

“Nothing,” he tried, but Tony narrowed his eyes. “Some drunk guy hit me. It’s fine. It’ll heal.”

The silence met them once again. Tony nodded, and Peter stood there like the world would shatter if he dared to move. A heart attack. The man had a heart attack, but somehow, he was sitting there, acting more concerned over a simple bruise on Peter’s face than the weak ticker in his own chest.

“You can sit, Pete,” Tony said, nodding over at a chair beside the bed. “I won’t bite.”

“Is that a promise?”

He frowned. “About earlier, Pete—I just—”

“You don’t have to explain yourself,” Peter said with a shrug. He finally managed to move his feet and sit down in one of the uncomfortable chairs. By this point, he didn’t really care about what happened earlier. Well, he _did_ , but he didn’t feel the need to talk about it now. When Tony was up in his workshop having a _heart attack_ , he had asked for Peter. He wanted Peter. That, alone, contradicted everything he had said earlier.

Peter wanted to believe that.

“I do,” Tony said. He looked healthy, but he also looked tired. “I mean, I was being a total dickhead. You’re trying not to smile—I can see it. You admit it.”

Peter covered his face with his hand. “No.”

Tony cracked a grin, and it slowly faded the longer he kept his gaze on Peter. “I am sorry, Pete. Really. I had been annoyed about things that even didn’t pertain to you, but I took that anger out on you. I’m sorry. And we all know apologies mean more when they come from me.”

“It doesn’t matter now.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Tony.

Peter shrugged, staring down at his hands. “Because—because you almost _died_ , Mister Stark.”

“Totally did not,” the older man muttered. “But continue.”

“You had a heart attack, and FRIDAY had to tell me about it,” said Peter. His voice wavered as he spoke. “She said you asked for me.”

Tony nodded. “Yeah. Sounds about right. I don’t really remember a lot because I’m on some pain meds that make your head look like a hot air balloon. But it makes sense that I’d ask for you.”

“Why?”

Peter felt like he couldn’t speak. He felt like he had so much to say that he was better off saying nothing at all. A heart attack. Tony had a heart attack.

“If I thought that, in any way, I wasn’t going to be okay, Pete,” Tony said, “I’d want you to be there. You know why?”

Peter shook his head.

“Cos’ you make me feel better, kiddo,” Tony said with a smile. “You make dumb jokes that don’t make sense. It’s endearing. And everything I might’ve said earlier—I didn’t mean it; okay? I wouldn’t trade your company for the world.”

Peter didn’t know if he was able to believe it, but he had no reason not to. Tony was an honest man. If he said he didn’t mean something, then he didn’t mean it.

“What about Spider-Man?” Peter mumbled.

“What about it?”

“Do I—do I deserve to be Spider-Man?”

Tony looked offended that Peter was even asking the question. “Kid, you’re the only one in the world who deserves to be Spider-Man. And no one—quite literally because of your weird powers—could do it better than you.”

Peter smiled weakly.

“But I’m still serious about the school thing, ‘kay?” Tony continued in a lighter tone. “You gotta work on that. I’ve been yelled at by May too many times. You understand?”

“Yeah, _dad_ ,” Peter muttered.

Tony chuckled and reached out a hand for Peter to take. When he did, Tony squeezed it three times.

A heart attack. If it had been any worse, if Tony had fallen unconscious before anyone could reach him, Peter wasn’t sure how he would be reacting now. He would succumb to guilt, and that was what haunted him presently. Tony wasn’t Ben. Peter had to remind himself that Tony wasn’t Ben.

“Don’t do that again,” Peter said quietly, “the heart attack thing. Don’t do it again.”

The corner of Tony’s lips twitched. “Okay, sure,” he said. “I’ll try. I’ll reprogram my heart to never fail.”

“I’m sure you, of all people, could do that,” Peter remarked, shrugging. As he yawned, the ache and exhaustion he spent all night repressing finally settled in.

“You don’t have to stay, kiddo,” said Tony. “I’m gonna be here for a few days anyway. You can come visit with bouquets and teddy bears all you want after a good night’s rest.”

Peter smiled. “Bold of you to assume I have the money to afford that junk.”

“Just ask Pepper, she’ll give you gift shop money.” Tony grimaced once he said the words. “Shit, I gotta tell Pepper.”

“Are you gonna be okay, Mister Stark?” Peter asked, fumbling with the edge of his— _Tony’s_ —t-shirt.

“Of course,” Tony said, huffing. “I’m Iron Man. Iron Man can’t die.”

Peter let out a quiet laugh and shook his head. “I kinda webbed my suit to the roof, so I gotta go get that before some maintenance guy finds it, I guess. Plus—” He scratched the back of his neck. “—I didn’t really tell May where I was. She’s probably freaking out.”

“If you tell her I almost died, I’m sure she’ll be mad that I didn’t fully commit,” Tony said.

“She likes you,” Peter replied. “She just thinks you’re a narcissist.”

“Well, she’s correct.”

Peter stood and stretched his tired muscles. “I’m gonna come back tomorrow, Mister Stark, I promise. I’ll bring us peanut butter milkshakes”

“Oh, kiddo, I don’t deserve you.”

“That’s probably true,” Peter said, smiling. “Bye, Mister Stark.”

“Bye, kid. Love you.”

Peter almost reacted to the words. As he gave Tony one final wave, he decided to blame it on the pain meds instead.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading ! [come talk to me on tumblr!](https://itsybitsyspiderling.tumblr.com/)


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